Renaming remote git branch

Question

I have 2 git branches: master and experimental.

Experimental became good, I want to make it the master. I figured I would rename to shuffle things around, but here is what I got:

nutebook:Stuff nathan$ git remote rename master old error: Could not rename config section 'remote.master' to 'remote.old' 

I use GitHub and Git-Tower.

Answer 1

The following is a guide to rename your master branch. It will work just as easily to rename your experimental branch.

Here's how I did the renaming.

First, in your working tree, locally rename master to something else.

git branch -m master old-dev 

Renaming a branch does work while you are on the branch, so there's no need to checkout something else.

Then, locally rename the maintenance branch (2.63-branch) to master:

git branch -m 2.63-branch master 

Now, time to mess with the remote. Just in case you screw up, you might want to make sure you have a current backup. First, delete the remote's master:

git push origin :master 

And now, give the remote your new master:

git push origin master:refs/heads/master 

Update: When creating a new branch, the refs/heads/ prefix is needed on the remote side. If the branch already exists (as master did above) only the branch name is required on the remote side.

... and your now-renamed old master:

git push origin old-dev:refs/heads/old-dev 

Finally, delete the old name of your maintenance branch to prevent confusion:

git push origin :2.63-branch 

Clients will now get the 'new' master branch when they pull.

see this site.